Cecilia Ziniti became interested in generative AI while serving as general counsel at Replit, after gaining early access to GPT through the company’s work with OpenAI. Teaching lawyers to use ChatGPT showed her that general-purpose tools often lacked the precision, sourcing and tone required for professional legal work. She concluded that these gaps should become product requirements for a legal AI company.
Ziniti partnered with Replit engineer Bardia Pourvakil to build GC AI. Pourvakil brought the technical expertise, while Ziniti understood the work and the needs of in-house legal departments as the company’s ideal customer profile . Her career included legal roles at Amazon, Cruise, Anki and Replit, as well as earlier work at Yahoo and Morrison & Foerster.
Ziniti left Replit on November 1, 2023, and incorporated GC AI about a week later. The company began with an AI assistant for corporate legal departments before adding contract analysis and tools for handling requests submitted to legal teams. GC AI says it serves roughly 2,100 companies, up from about 900 a year earlier, and generates revenue through per-seat subscriptions and additional products.
GC AI has focused on corporations and in-house teams, differentiating it from competitors that initially served law firms. Trust is a major selling point: about one-third of its 125 employees are lawyers, and the company pursued SOC 2 compliance , data-isolation protections and a policy that it does not train models on customers’ confidential information. The company has raised nearly $72 million across three rounds, including a $60 million Series B that valued it at $555 million.